“The changing stories told about Yuan Longping and the invention of hybrid rice do not merely represent political expediencies but testify to questions at the very heart of our discipline: what constitutes “science,” and how has this transformed over time?"
Professor Sigrid Schmalzer just published “Yuan Longping, Hybrid Rice, and the Meaning of Science in the Cultural Revolution and Beyond”in the journal Endeavour. Yuan Longping created a variety of hybrid rice that revolutionized Chinese agricultural production during the Mao era, but he came to fame only after Mao's death in 1976.
